You're My Fall
by nauticaas
Summary: Humans are really fragile beings. Slight ZoSan. Character Death.


**Author's Note:** A oneshot I had been playing on and off with for a while, until semain-the-undead's post on tumblr motivated me to finish it and post it. There is supposed to be implied Zosan and some noncanon One Piece mythology, but the main point of this is that I really like to make my favorite characters suffer; I'm sorry. If you like pain, have at it. I'm not exactly sure if I will ever continue it, because I know that came up when I shared it on tumblr, but honestly I don't know if I can pull something like this off in the first place. Maybe if I ever improve down the line and complete some of my other stories first. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this strange little piece.

* * *

_Could you imagine it?_

The irony of the situation was not lost on him. Through countless battles and enemies, after each new scar and mark he left carved onto his skin like a canvas, with every drop of blood he had spilled, he had fought for what was important to him for so many years, in the span of a moment he threw it all away—hopes, fears, and dreams—and prepared to die.

And he lived.

It was a trait that they all shared, that when their plight was at its lowest, they rose up higher than ever, stronger and better and more determined than before. Determined enough to do impossible and foolish things like facing off a god, or freeing an entire country, or even picking frequent fights with the world like they were just kids in a schoolyard. A peculiarity…but then again, what pirate wasn't like that?

So none of that other garbage had been enough to kill them, and frankly he didn't care about that. His attachment to life was something he had thrown away long ago and he proved it time and time again (but he replaced it with something much more hazardous to his goals). In truth, every one of them had thrown away their attachment to life at some point, and therefore death seemed to let them go each and every time, until he broke the cardinal rule: "Don't get attached to life; that's dangerously ordinary"_._

Ordinary men didn't get to accomplish dreams as fantastic and impossible as theirs.

Sanji blocked his attack with the heel of his shoe and shoved back just enough to keep his balance as they faced off, and they didn't even catch the attention of the others scattered across the deck of the ship. The cook's insults were the usual, and he shot back the same tired old retorts, but there was something softer between them, hidden underneath their skin and their expressions, light and ordinary and safe. There was no huge revelation or confession because they had already learned to read each other (_how long?_) and knew their answers before they had even begun (_eternity_).

Sanji's eyes were brighter than the sun when he admitted wordlessly that he could get used to the idea. _I had already imagined it before_. They parted ways because this admittance was still too new and perfect to linger on right now; a scratch on Wado's edge made the perfect excuse for Zoro to go grab his sharpening stone, and Sanji had spilled the sake during their skirmish and decided to head to the galley to fetch him an apology drink for that. He stole Zoro's thing for a moment (_oi, the kitchen's the other way, "lost-cook"_) and bristled immediately, his reddened face hiding a certain blush as he brushed the swordsman off and muttered something about his mossheaded-ness being contagious or something.

It happened quickly, like a cufflink getting caught on a white blade's guard or maybe a misstep on the sea-slicked surface of the second deck. Nothing graceful, nothing dramatic; nothing like the way that the idiot cook was always trying to go out (a blaze of glory, a hard-won battle, a selfless sacrifice). All that the swordsman knew was that in one moment he was fumbling with his sword and ridiculously expensive and strong silk and tiny, stupid, also-ridiculously strong silk knots_, _and in the next he was staring blankly at a crumpled form on the stairs, nothing but long, lanky limbs in a crinkled suit with the sleeve half-torn off. One of the cufflinks was still in Zoro's hand.

Luffy gave a bursting laugh and asked if he wasn't going to make another weird sound like "hoegeh!" this time, and Usopp shushed him while barely able to hide his own guilty snicker behind his hand. The others dealt with their amusement in their own way, shaking their heads in exasperation and wondering how badly the cook's temper would explode this time. Zoro was surely in for it now, they thought with laughter in their eyes, there was no way this couldn't end in tears.

Chopper was the first to realize that something was off about the accident, and he called Robin over just as suddenly to help him with extra limbs and a steadying touch. While Luffy had gotten confused as to why he wasn't allowed to haul his cook back onto his feet and help him gang up on Zoro for "revenge", he was surprisingly complacent when the doctor ordered him to stay back. None of them had yet grasped the gravity of the situation yet, not even when Zoro responded to Franky's and the captain's teasing jabs in the same way he had reacted to this accident: with nothing.

"God, that was shitty stupid of me." Sanji's voice brought their attention back to the scene on the stairs, where the cook was smiling underneath his mussed bangs despite his position and being unable to move at all (not that the doctor would have allowed him to).

"I think my shoe's come off..." he laughed softly, like he wasn't sure of who he was supposed to direct his comments to. "Would someone mind getting it back on my foot?"

"…of course, Sanji," Robin smiled, and without really thinking about it she allowed one of her hands to bloom near his foot to fulfill his request. "Chopper, is this fine?"

Chopper took a deep breath and nodded slowly. "Be careful not to jostle him, and pay attention to your other hands too, please."

Sanji heard, rather than saw, the fear that they were trying to hide, and he shrugged off their concerns with a chuckle (figuratively; he found that he couldn't actually move his shoulder very much at all). "Don't worry…I'm not in pain, Chopper. You'll get me back on my feet just fine, I'm sure."

His unfocused gaze settled on Zoro, who found himself kneeling on the stairs beside him without actually remembering how he had gotten there himself. Wado Ichimonji lay between them innocuously.

"Oi, Mosshead," Sanji murmured, squeezing his hand to keep it from trembling and seemingly unaware of their audience. "You'll have to get your own alcohol; sake's on the bar counter, okay?"

Zoro had no idea what to say to that, and so he held up the torn cufflink with a lost expression. "The booze? What makes you think I'm even thinking about that right now, Stupid-brow?"

It started as a quiet wheeze and then blossomed into full-out laughter, and if Sanji could have doubled over hugging his sides he would have. That was all that it took to break the tension, and everyone on the ship breathed a unanimous sigh of relief. He was in good spirits for the rest of the afternoon, even as Chopper prodded and examined him to the point of discomfort. When his thoughts became more disjointed and jumbled and worry began to creep back into everyone's expressions, he continued on rambling, blasé and content (at least he had been given that small mercy); still, there was no doubt in Zoro's mind as to what he was referring to in the end.

"…sorry, I think I _am_ lost…it was his eyes, I believe…"

By sundown he was cold to the touch.

* * *

They had hope, and it was a choking, desperate hope, but if it meant that they could undo what had rattled their wonderful, perfect ship of a home, then they would sail all the way to the ends of the earth and back to do it.

Nami stood at the bow of the Thousand Sunny, which was usually the captain's favorite spot, but considering the fact that nothing on the ship had made sense since the 'incident", no one thought to question her presence there. Luffy and Brook had joined her at the helm, pretending that they hadn't noticed her red-rimmed eyes or the frantic, under-the-table transactions she had pulled to get them information (a hint, rumor, legend, anything that might just _fix_ this); they were the only two who knew exactly how many belis had bought them the lead that they were now following blindly.

There was an underground spring, one with properties similar to Brook's Devil Fruit, and it lay only one or two days' worth of sailing to the southeast. The musician had brought up his own brush with death in a tearful moment of distraction, and that had inspired Nami's search for any stories or rumors about other ways to bring back the dead: this myth of a fountain (that might not even exist) was all that they had managed to wring out from their countless inquiries. Nami had never felt so much like a broken dial tone; she couldn't remember the last words she had said since "Have you ever heard any stories about resurrecting a person?"

The number of looks that had gotten her was enough to destroy what was left of her nerves, but as she stood before the cool, still waters of the fountain, she dared to hope that this was all going to be worth it. It would cost them too much if it didn't.

There was a faint, ethereal glow coming from all over the place, and it was hard to tell where the source of the light was, but the underground spring itself was black and silent. Its dark, flat surface was briefly disturbed by Sanji's body, and it quickly reshaped and resettled itself just as smoothly as before.

"I don't feel really well," Brook muttered from the entrance, glancing around fearfully at the walls of the cavern. "There's something familiar about this place."

"Like what?" Nami said faintly, her fists clenched at her sides so tightly that she could actually feel blood welling around the grooves her fingernails were leaving in her palms. It was an eerie, unsettling place and she could feel it too; her lead had warned them not to approach the spring so senselessly, mentioning the tales about it being an actual path into the otherworld and possibly connected with the creation of one of the Devil's Fruits. "It's all we have to go on; we don't have much of a choice, do we?"

"…I guess we don't." He glanced briefly at Luffy and Zoro, who had edged as close to the pool of water as they could without completely driving themselves mad from the irrational, creeping dread and horror emanating from the water. The swordsman might not have needed to worry about that, though; since the accident two days ago, that deadened, empty stare hadn't left his face at all. "Let's just hope that he can hear us, then."

* * *

Sanji heard them, of course; for the past few days it was all he had been able to hear (there seemed to be nothing else to listen to in this hell, or wherever he had ended up after falling down the stairs). He had walked around for a while, thinking that maybe he was just disoriented from a blow to the head and that he had imagined the whole thing, but the tunnels he was wandering led him nowhere but the same stupid black pool and there was no sign of his crewmates anywhere at all. He did stumble across other people along the way, but they weren't any help at all; if anything, they seemed even more lost and confused than he was.

Then, he realized that he couldn't remember even coming to this place, or how he had gotten there, and he panicked briefly before the black pool showed up again. After that he threw all of his frustration and confusion into kicking as many holes into the walls of the tunnels as he could. It was an exercise in futility; the new openings he had made only led to more tunnels, and he was certain that he was doomed to walk around blindly like this until he died.

_Why did you have to be such an idiot, Curlybrow?_

That wasn't his voice. Startled, Sanji looked around and strained to hear something, anything, from that voice again. It came back clearer the second time around, and by the third he was following the swordsman's voice through the tunnels, ignoring the suddenly animated people looking up at him as he ran past them.

_Please…you can't just…not like **this**. You weren't supposed to fucking die like this._

"Mosshead, where are you?" He wasn't supposed to be the lost one; that was the swordsman's role. What had happened to him? "…where the hell am I?"

_You said you could imagine eternity…Sanji, **please**._

There was a ray of light coming from the cavern with the black pool, and Sanji could hear the others, too. Wherever that fountain led to, he was sure that his crew was waiting for him there, and so was the Mosshead (a smile spread across his face at the thought of seeing his stupid mug soon enough). There was no way he was going to accept this place as his new reality; thought the thought was nagging at the back of his head, he had steadfastly been ignoring it because there was still too much waiting for him back in the lif-…the ship and crew that he had been wrenched from. _I'm **not**. Not that…that word._ He couldn't even bring himself to think of it, until he had to.

The people, who were starting to look more and more like corpses, had begun to trail after him, and Sanji slowly found himself being backed into a corner in the main room again. There was nowhere else to run, and he was going to die.

"You're already dead, you know. Everyone here is."

_I'm not. I'm not yet, but they're going to kill me._

"You can't kill someone who's already dead."

He raised a hand to his snapped neck and tried to suppress the horror and fear coiling up in his stomach. The girl stared back impassively, and the mob of grey-faced people had appeared at the entrances. Suddenly, he found that the panic blinding him had been replaced with nothing but anger (at this hell, at the shitty stairs, at himself). What the hell was he doing, waiting around and pretending that he hadn't killed himself on some stupid stairs like the idiot that he was? It didn't mean that he was going to lie down and die forever; nobody would forgive him for that, and he was one of them. _What a shitty way to die, anyway._ "I…am….dead…but _I_ don't have to be!"

As soon as he had admitted that to himself the path out of there swung wide open; his crew and his home were only a few steps away through some creepy black water and a door. He glanced back at her suspiciously. "I can just leave?"

"Everyone wants to leave…"

He took in her tattered clothes and the small, sad look on her face. What he should have done was make for the doorway and leave this whole place behind; what he could have done was to drag himself back out of the grave and fall into the swordsman's arms, who was cradling his body helplessly and trying not to fall to pieces. The problem was that he was never good at doing should-haves, could-haves, would-haves. With his friends' voices screaming at him from beyond the doorway and a horde of the dead closing in on them, Sanji turned around and knelt in front of the little girl, extending a hand toward her tenderly.

"What do you want?"

* * *

The fountain gave a horrifying shriek which echoed off the walls and into the tunnels leading up to the surface, and it knocked all of the Fruit users flat on their backs; when Franky and Usopp managed to wrench their hands away from their bleeding ears, they found them completely unresponsive and catatonic, though they were still breathing.

Nami looked around blearily through the tears flooding her eyes and streaming down her cheeks, and while she could still see the broad, white silhouette of Zoro's shoulders and back, Sanji was nowhere to be seen.

It hadn't worked.

Forcing herself back up and staggering toward the silent, motionless swordsman, Nami breathed in slowly and tried to figure out what to say. What was she supposed to say to him? She couldn't even figure out how she was going to get through this herself, never mind the rest of the crew. Zoro, however, had been the most devastated out of all of them after what happened back on the Sunny; he might not have said anything (or reacted at all, which was worrisome in itself), but it wasn't hard to tell that the blank, stoic look in his eyes was caused by anything other than the accident.

"…Zoro?"

Nami closed her mouth again when she heard the voice; it was the light, soft tone of a girl barely on the cusp of adolescence, but already it had a certain edge to it, like it belonged to someone used to putting on a gruff, cocky front for the world. As she stepped around the swordsman's slumped figure, the pool came into view, and with it the surprise of her life, and everyone else's as well (but she couldn't tear her gaze away from Zoro's face instead).

Zoro's expression was the most vulnerable thing she had ever seen, and all it had taken was the strange appearance of a small dark-haired child at the edge of the pool to leave him looking so unsettled and shocked.

_"Kuina."_


End file.
